Fun, Fun, Fun
by Nancy Kaminski
Summary: How does Nat pass the time when there's no one to dissect and the lab's all tidied up?


Fun, Fun, Fun  
  
by Nancy Kaminski  
(c) July 4, 1998  
  
~~~~~  
  
A little vignette in answer to LeeAnn Pultz's Rock Star! Challenge.  
Permission is given to archive this on the FKFIC website.  
  
~~~~~  
  
Natalie Lambert was bored. For some reason the recently deceased  
population of Metro Toronto had declined to die in mysterious,  
violent ways for the last three days, and the usually overworked  
medical examiner had no bodies to slice and dice.  
  
She had finished all her outstanding paperwork the night before. All  
her dissecting instruments were shining and in their proper places.  
Grace was on vacation, the other two techs were sick, and everyone  
else worked on a different floor, so she had no one to talk to. The  
only thing left for her to do was to straighten out her desk---and  
she just didn't want to. A messy desk was a happy desk, that was her  
motto.  
  
God, she was bored.  
  
After staring at the calendar picture that had stayed the same since  
June two years ago (she liked it and she wasn't going to take it  
down, no matter what anyone said, so there) for a half hour, she  
decided if she didn't hear something other than her own heartbeat and  
the whoosh of the air conditioning system soon, she was not only  
going to be bored, she was going to be crazy.  
  
The cassette player! She had a cheap little cassette player stashed  
in a supply cabinet, and she seemed to remember there was a battered  
box of tapes with it. She would have turned on a radio, but since the  
morgue was in the basement, all the steel in the building interfered  
with reception. Not even FM could punch through that steel barrier.  
  
She rummaged through the cabinet and finally found the cassette  
player behind a jug of disinfectant. "Yes!" she exclaimed, when she  
found the box of tapes.  
  
She took them back to her desk, plugged the cassette player into an  
outlet, and started sorting through the tapes. She needed something  
raucus, with a beat---something to revive her rapidly vegetating  
brain.  
  
Her happiness at finding the tapes dimmed as she read the titles.  
"Reflections: a New Age Sampler," "Birdsong in an English  
Meadow"... the somnambulant list went on and on. Belated she  
remembered she had brought in all sorts of soothing tapes to help  
calm her frazzled nerves when the workload got too heavy.  
  
Damn and double damn.  
  
She picked the last tape out of the box expecting to see another  
snoozer of a title. She looked at it and whooped. "Awwright!"  
  
Natalie popped the tape in, turned up the volume, and hit Play. After  
a few seconds, the tiny speaker emitted a cheerful blast of sound.  
  
If everybody had an ocean  
Across the USA  
Everybody'd be surfin'  
Like Californi-a  
You'd see 'em wearing their baggies  
Huarachi sandals too  
A bushy bushy blond hairdo  
Surfin' USA.  
  
Natalie joined the Beach Boys in her offkey voice. What she lacked in  
quality, however, she made up for in volume. Small beakers began  
vibrating.  
  
She pounded her hands on the desk along with the drums. She spun her  
chair while waving her arms in large, meaningless gestures. Every so  
often she pushed her chair away from the desk with her foot and shot  
across the room until she hit the dissecting table, then pushed off  
from there to another wall, then back to her desk, like a human  
ricochet.  
  
Well she got her daddy's car  
And she cruised to the hamburger stand now  
Seems she forgot all about the library  
Like she told her old man now  
And with the radio blasting  
She goes cruisin' just as fast as she can now  
And she'll have fun, fun, fun  
Till her daddy takes the T-Bird away.  
  
Natalie was dancing around the dissecting table now, her movements  
uncoordinated but energetic, flinging her arms in the air, bouncing up  
and down, and gyrating her hips happily. She was honking out the  
words to the chorus when her dancing brought her around to face the  
door.  
  
And an interested audience.  
  
She stopped dead in her tracks, her lab coat askew and her hair  
disheveled, to face the four people standing in the doorway. The  
blood drained out of her face and she ran to her desk to hit the Stop  
button on the cassette player, wishing she could just keep on running  
and hide in the cold room until the next week at the earliest.  
  
But that would be cowardly, so she cleared her throat, ran fingers  
through her hair, straightened her coat, and turned to face her  
critics. They were still standing speechless in the doorway---Nick,  
Schanke, and two paramedics with a stretcher bearing a bodybag.  
  
Nick broke the silence. With a sympathetic expression he asked,  
"Didn't Frankie make the beach party, Annette?" His mouth was  
trembling with the effort not to laugh.  
  
With as much dignity as she could muster Natalie answered, "No, he  
didn't. But it's my party, and I'll dance if I want to." With a regal  
gesture, she motioned the stretcher into the room and supervised the  
transfer of the body to her table.  
  
The paramedics left, but she thought she heard them sniggering  
quietly as they pushed the empty stretcher down the hall. Great. Now  
she would be the laughingstock of all the paramedics in the city.  
Just peachy.  
  
Somehow Nick and Schanke managed to give her a rundown on the victim  
without mentioning her dancing and singing skills. But as they turned  
to leave, Schanke murmured in her ear, "Slow night, huh?" before he  
sauntered out of the lab.  
  
Nick lingered a moment as he usually did. Natalie pointed a finger at  
him and threatened, "If you say one more word, Nicholas B. Knight,  
I'll think of something *really* interesting to put in your next  
protein shake."  
  
He gave her a brief hug and kissed her forehead. "Not a word, Nat,  
not a word. But if you ever want to try moonlight surfing..."  
  
She swatted him in the chest with the report folder he had given her.  
"Get out! Now! Go detect something!"  
  
Nick scooted out the door, calling "See ya later---Annette." over his  
shoulder. An eraser sailed past his shoulder and he grinned.  
  
Natalie stood in the middle of her lab, wondering how she would face  
going into the squadroom next time she had to run reports over there.  
No doubt Schanke would be regaling everyone in sight about how he  
found the medical examiner prancing around like an out-of-tune fool  
in the middle of the night.  
  
But as she turned to the body on the table (Yeehah! Something to do!)  
she was singing softly.  
  
" and she'll have fun, fun, fun, till her daddy takes the T-Bird  
awaaaaaaaay."  
  
~~~~~  
  
Finis  
  
Credits: C'mon, you know these are Beach Boy songs! "Surfin' USA"  
and "Fun, Fun, Fun."  
  
Nancy Kaminski  
nancykam@mediaone.net  
  
  



End file.
